Miyoo Mini Plus vs RG35XX 2026: 128MB Beats 256MB

Somewhere upstream of this article, a research brief asserted that the Miyoo Mini Plus and the Anbernic RG35XX "share the RK3326 processor for perfect 8-bit/16-bit emulation." This is wrong. It is not wrong in the small, forgivable way where a spec got transposed. It is wrong twice over: the two handhelds do not share an RK3326, and neither of them contains an RK3326 in the first place. They do not even share an instruction-set generation. The Miyoo runs a dual-core Arm Cortex-A7; the original RG35XX runs a quad-core Cortex-A9 bolted to a discrete PowerVR GPU. That is two different vendors, two different core designs, and two different graphics pipelines, presented to you as "the same chip."

I lead with the error because it is the whole story in miniature. This is a $60 fight between two devices that look nearly identical, weigh within three grams of each other, and top out at roughly the same games — and yet the more powerful one, on paper, is not obviously the one you should buy. Spec sheets lie by omission at this price. The thing that decides the winner is not the silicon. Let's do it properly.

The Verdict, Up Front

I am not going to make you scroll 6,000 words for the recommendation. Here it is, and then I will spend the rest of the article showing my work.

The one-sentence answer

If your library ends at the 16-bit and Game Boy Advance line and you want the most refined thing you can put in a jacket pocket, buy the Miyoo Mini Plus; if you want horizontal ergonomics, HDMI-out to a television, a little more PlayStation 1 headroom, and a device you can actually find in stock, buy an RG35XX — and specifically one of the newer Allwinner H700 variants, not the 2022 original the brief keeps describing. Both cost between $55 and $80. Neither is a bad decision. One of them is simply better suited to the person you are.

Who each device is for

The Miyoo Mini Plus is a specialist. It is a NES-through-GBA machine with a beautiful 3.5-inch screen, the best custom firmware in the budget class, built-in Wi-Fi, and a battery that outlasts everything near its size. It does one tier of emulation flawlessly and then quietly declines to pretend it can do more. The RG35XX is a generalist. It has more raw compute, a discrete graphics core, a mini-HDMI port, dual microSD slots, and a horizontal grip that your hands will thank you for after the third hour. It pushes a little further up the difficulty curve — clean PS1, and on the newer models, light Nintendo DS — at the cost of firmware polish and battery.

The claim the brief got wrong (and why it matters)

The RK3326 error is not pedantry. If you believed the two devices ran identical silicon, you would reasonably conclude the only differences were battery, Wi-Fi, and screen shape — cosmetic stuff. In reality the compute gap is real and runs toward the RG35XX, which makes the Miyoo's victories more interesting, not less. The Miyoo wins several of these categories while carrying half the RAM and two fewer CPU cores. When the underdog silicon wins, the reason is always software, form factor, or discipline — and that is exactly what happens here.

Two Chips That Were Never the Same

Let's establish what is actually inside these things, because everything downstream depends on it and the internet is full of listings that copy each other's mistakes.

What the Miyoo Mini Plus actually runs

The Miyoo Mini Plus is built on a SigmaStar SSD202D. That is a dual-core Arm Cortex-A7 clocked around 1.2GHz, paired with a Mali-400 MP2 GPU and 128MB of DDR3 memory integrated into the SoC package. This is not a gaming chip. The SSD202D's day job is powering smart-home panels and IP cameras; it wandered into the handheld market because it is cheap, sips power, and is more than enough to run a Super Nintendo. Adam Conway's 9/10 review for XDA states the SoC plainly — "dual Arm Cortex A7 cores and 128MB" — and then delivers the only verdict that matters at this tier: the Miyoo is "not going to be setting benchmark records ... but that's more than good enough for most retro titles." That sentence is the entire value proposition. Nobody buys a Miyoo to benchmark it.

What the RG35XX actually runs

The original 2022 RG35XX is built on an Actions Semiconductor ATM7039S: a quad-core Cortex-A9 clocked up to roughly 1.6GHz, with a discrete PowerVR SGX544 GPU at around 384MHz and 256MB of DDR3. On raw specification this out-guns the Miyoo comprehensively — twice the CPU cores, a dedicated graphics part rather than an integrated Mali, and double the RAM. MakeUseOf's review confirms the payoff where it counts, describing PlayStation 1 performance across Tekken 3, Crash Bandicoot 3, Ridge Racer 4, and Medal of Honor as "clear and accurate without any major slowdowns or frame skipping." The Cortex-A9 and the PowerVR were the beating heart of a generation of tablets and set-top boxes; here they exist to brute-force Sony's 32-bit library, and they mostly succeed.

Why "RK3326" is wrong — and why the gap matters less than you'd think

The RK3326 is a real Rockchip part — quad Cortex-A35 — and it powers plenty of budget handhelds, including several Anbernic and Powkiddy units. It simply is not in either of these two. So when a comparison tells you both devices "share the RK3326," it has laundered three different chips into one imaginary one. The honest framing is this: the RG35XX has meaningfully more compute, and it can convert that compute into a slightly higher emulation ceiling. But above the 16-bit line, both devices are running interpreters and dynarecs on Arm cores that were mid-range a decade ago, and the difference between "two A7 cores" and "four A9 cores" evaporates the moment you ask either to do something it was never going to do well — like Nintendo 64 or PSP. Inside their shared comfort zone, the extra silicon buys the RG35XX almost nothing you can see. That is the paradox this whole article turns on.

The Spec Sheet, Line by Line

Here is the full comparison, corrected against primary sources rather than reseller listings. Where a figure is disputed between reviews, I have noted the range rather than pick a flattering number.

Reading the table: RAM and the GPU nobody mentions

Two rows deserve a second look. First, RAM: the RG35XX carries 256MB to the Miyoo's 128MB, and this is the single fact the "same chip" myth cannot survive — you do not get two RAM figures from one SoC. Second, the GPU. The RG35XX has a discrete PowerVR SGX544; the Miyoo leans on an integrated Mali-400 MP2. In principle that is a real graphics advantage for the Anbernic. In practice, at 640×480 running software that mostly predates hardware 3D, the GPU spends its life pushing 2D sprite planes it could handle in its sleep. The PowerVR earns its keep in exactly one place — PlayStation 1 — and nowhere else on this device.

The USB-C myth that will not die

The brief claims the original RG35XX charges over micro-USB. So does the popular gogamegeek comparison, which states in as many words that "the Anbernic RG35XX uses a micro-USB port." Both are wrong, and they are wrong together, which is the tell of a copied error. XDA's hands-on review of the original RG35XX lists the port as USB-C, full stop. Both of these handhelds charge and transfer over USB-C. If you have read anywhere that you need to keep a micro-USB cable around for your RG35XX, throw that sentence out along with the article it came in.

The things they genuinely share

Strip away the errors and the real commonalities are these: a 3.5-inch 640×480 IPS panel in a 4:3 ratio — the correct shape for retro content and identical between them; no analog sticks on either, which quietly caps both at the 2D-and-early-3D era; a headphone jack and mono-ish speaker; a D-pad, four face buttons, and shoulder triggers. Same class, same target library, same $60 neighborhood. Everything that separates them lives in the details below.

Screens, Build, and Ergonomics

You hold this device for hours. The abstract spec war matters less here than the concrete question of what it feels like in your hands.

Two 640×480 panels, effectively tied

Both handhelds use a 3.5-inch, 640×480 IPS panel at 4:3. This is the correct resolution for the job: it divides cleanly enough that a 240p Super Nintendo image scales without the shimmering mess you get on mismatched displays, and 4:3 means no pillarboxing waste. PropelRC measured the Miyoo's panel at roughly 450 nits, bright enough for indoor use and marginal in direct sun. Beware one piece of internet misinformation here: some comparisons — including a widely-quoted one — describe the Miyoo Mini Plus as having a "2.8-inch 320×240" screen and declare the RG35XX's display vastly sharper. That is the original Miyoo Mini being confused with the Plus. The Plus upgraded to the same 3.5-inch 640×480 panel class as the Anbernic. On screen quality, call this a genuine tie.

Vertical brick versus horizontal slab

Form factor is where they diverge hard. The Miyoo Mini Plus is a vertical "brick" in the Game Boy tradition — compact, pocketable, and adorable, at 108 × 78 × 22 mm. The original RG35XX is also a vertical unit but larger in footprint at roughly 117 × 81 mm, though slightly thinner at 20 mm. Reviewers consistently find the larger Anbernic more comfortable over long sessions precisely because it is bigger: your hands are less cramped. The DROIX review of the RG35XX put it bluntly, calling it "more comfortable to hold over longer gaming sessions." The tradeoff is obvious — the Miyoo disappears into a coat pocket; the RG35XX announces itself.

Build quality, weight, and the rattle test

Both land at about 165 grams, which is close enough that the brief's suggested "weight trap" is a non-event — they are the same weight to the human hand. Build materials tell a subtler story. XDA's Miyoo reviewer liked the device but noted the plastic "can make it feel cheap." Meanwhile MakeUseOf praised the RG35XX's construction directly: "There is zero flex to the case, the buttons are well made and sit nicely." The community consensus, echoed across comparison threads, is that the Anbernic "feels denser, more durable" and does not rattle when shaken. If you judge a device by how solid it feels, the RG35XX edges this. If you judge it by how little it weighs in a pocket, the Miyoo does. Neither is fragile.

The Emulation Ceiling

This is the section everyone actually reads. How far up the console timeline can each device climb before it falls over? I have pulled numbers from four independent reviews so you are not relying on a single reviewer's mood.

8-bit and 16-bit: both flawless, no argument

NES, SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, PC Engine, Master System, Neo Geo Pocket — all of it runs at full speed on both devices, full stop. This is the tier the RK3326 myth was hand-waving toward, and to be fair it is correct about the outcome even if it is wrong about the cause. PropelRC's Miyoo review reports "Chrono Trigger (SNES): Perfect 60fps throughout my 12-hour playthrough," and XDA's reviewer notes Game Boy Advance titles "run flawlessly." If your entire library lives at or below the 16-bit line — and for a huge number of buyers, it does — then the emulation question is settled before it starts, and you should decide on battery, firmware, and form factor instead.

PlayStation 1: the RG35XX's home advantage

PS1 is the first tier where the hardware gap shows up. Both devices play it; the RG35XX plays it more comfortably. On the Miyoo, XDA found "PlayStation 1 games are a treat to play," but PropelRC caught the ceiling in the act, reporting "minor slowdown in Gran Turismo 2" — one of the most demanding PS1 titles. On the RG35XX, MakeUseOf ran Tekken 3, Crash 3, Ridge Racer 4, and Medal of Honor and reported performance "clear and accurate without any major slowdowns or frame skipping," while DROIX independently tested Tekken 3, Gran Turismo, and Ridge Racer 4 and "did not spot any slowdown." Both reviews clock roughly three hours of PS1 play before the battery taps out. The verdict: PS1 is playable on the Miyoo and clean on the RG35XX. If Sony's 32-bit catalog is your priority, that discrete PowerVR GPU is doing exactly what it was hired to do. Setting up cores for either machine is its own small project; our walkthrough on installing 200 RetroArch cores in about 40 minutes covers the BIOS placement and core selection that make PS1 behave.

Nintendo DS, N64, and PSP: here be dragons

Above PS1, both devices enter the asterisk zone — the tier Retro Game Corps flags in its family guide as systems that "cannot play every game at full speed, and so performance may vary." Nintendo DS is the interesting split. On the original RG35XX, XDA astonishingly reported "Nintendo DS at full speed, and Pokemon Black 2 runs at full speed" — but immediately qualified it with "two to three hours of playtime with Nintendo DS emulation," meaning you pay for it in watts. The Miyoo's dual A7 cores make DS a far rougher proposition. Nintendo 64 is a coin toss on both: GBAtemp's testing found the Miyoo runs light N64 titles "near full speed" but demanding ones at 70–85%, which is the polite way of saying "unplayable when it matters." PSP is off the table for both original units — the compute simply is not there. If any of DS, N64, or PSP is a hard requirement, neither of these is your handheld, and you should be reading our Retroid Pocket 5 versus 6 breakdown instead, where the silicon is a full generation newer.

Firmware Beats Silicon: OnionOS vs GarlicOS

Here is the thesis stated without hedging: in the budget handheld class, the operating system decides the winner more often than the chip does. The RG35XX has more silicon. The Miyoo has better software. In this class, software wins more of the arguments that matter.

OnionOS: the reason people forgive the Miyoo's chip

The Miyoo Mini Plus's superpower is OnionOS — properly the community OnionUI project, not a Miyoo product at all. It is, by broad consensus, the most polished custom firmware in the budget tier: fast boot, a gorgeous themable interface, a Game Switcher quick-launch overlay, RetroAchievements support, and box art that just works. PropelRC credits it with adding roughly "3 hours of battery life" over stock through better power management. The gogamegeek comparison, weighing everything, concluded flatly that "the Miyoo has a far better custom OS." This is the intangible that makes buyers forgive the 128MB and the dual-core chip: the device feels premium even though it is not.

GarlicOS: very good, and quietly stalled

The RG35XX's answer is GarlicOS, developed by the community figure known as Black Seraph — not "a developer named Garlic," which is another brief-grade error. On the original RG35XX, GarlicOS is genuinely good and closes most of the gap. But the successor, GarlicOS 2.0, has been stuck in early alpha for a long stretch; Retro Game Corps' advice remains to treat it as "still in an early alpha state" and to "wait until it is in a beta release state." The development has been on hold while the author recovers his health — an entirely human reason, and a reminder that the firmware propping up these devices is maintained by volunteers, not a company with a roadmap.

Both custom firmwares have plateaued — and that's fine

Here is the part the marketing will not tell you: both flagship custom firmwares have effectively frozen. OnionUI's stable release has sat at v4.3.1-1 since June 2024, with only a v4.4.0 beta appearing in January 2026 to add netplay, real-time-clock detection, and CPU-overclock hotkeys. GarlicOS 2.0 remains in the alpha limbo above. This is not decay — it is maturity. These platforms do what they set out to do and there is little left to add for hardware this modest. The lesson for a 2026 buyer: do not choose based on some imagined future firmware update. Choose based on what ships today, and today OnionOS is the more refined experience. If you plan to go deep on emulator configuration regardless of which you pick, the fundamentals are the same across both, and our RetroArch core guide applies to either.

Battery, Wi-Fi, and the HDMI Question

Three practical features split cleanly down the middle here — two for the Miyoo, one for the RG35XX — and they are the deciding factors for a lot of buyers.

Battery: the Miyoo's clearest win

The Miyoo Mini Plus carries a 3000mAh cell (some listings and XDA's teardown say 3200mAh) against the original RG35XX's 2600mAh (some listings 2100). More capacity in the same weight class translates directly to endurance: PropelRC logged roughly 6.5 hours of SNES and up to 7.5 hours of Game Boy on the Miyoo, while XDA cites "up to six hours." The RG35XX, by contrast, runs about 5 hours light and drops to 3–3.5 hours under PS1 load, per both MakeUseOf and DROIX. In real terms the Miyoo buys you an extra couple of hours between charges — the difference between "lasts a flight" and "lasts a layover." This is the brief's cleanest correct claim, and it holds up.

Wi-Fi: Miyoo has it, the original RG35XX does not

The Miyoo Mini Plus includes Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n, 2.4GHz). The original 2022 RG35XX has none — no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth. On the Miyoo, Wi-Fi is not a gimmick: it powers RetroAchievements sync, over-the-air scraping of box art, NTP clock-setting, and on the January 2026 OnionUI beta, netplay. It is not a streaming machine and you would not want to browse on it, but for a device this size the connectivity genuinely extends what it can do. Note the asterisk: this is a point against the original RG35XX specifically. The newer H700 variants add Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which we will get to.

HDMI: the RG35XX's genuine trump card

Flip it around and the RG35XX takes the one feature the Miyoo cannot answer: a mini-HDMI output that upscales to 720p on a television. The Miyoo has no video-out of any kind. DROIX put the point sharply in its Anbernic review: "One thing lacking on the Miyoo is a HDMI port, something both RG35XX models have." If you have ever wanted to drop a budget handheld into a dock and play Chrono Trigger on the couch with a proper controller, the RG35XX is the only one of these two that will do it. That said, temper expectations — 720p output from a device driving a 640×480 panel is serviceable, not a home-console replacement. For real living-room ambitions you want a MiSTer or a Retroid; our Retroid lineup roundup lays out where the ceiling actually lifts.

Price and Availability in 2026

Both devices sit in the same tight price band, but the details of what you pay for what and where you can actually get one tilt the decision.

The pricing table

The reseller ROM problem — and the law

Notice that several of those listings bundle a microSD "card," and notice the game counts the resellers advertise: one prominent Amazon Miyoo listing claims "15000+ games"; RG35XX listings routinely tout "5000+." Here is the part the product page will not print in bold: the hardware is legal; the pre-loaded ROM library is not. Emulator software itself was settled law a quarter-century ago — Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corp. (9th Cir. 2000) held that reverse-engineering a console to build an emulator is fair use. Distributing copyrighted ROMs is a different thing entirely, and that is precisely what a seller does when they mail you a card with fifteen thousand games on it. Those inflated counts are also, as I have written elsewhere, mostly fiction — regional duplicates, bad dumps, hacks, and bootlegs padding a number. I dug into exactly how the Miyoo's advertised catalog inflates in the Miyoo Mini Plus game-list teardown. The clean path is the same on both devices: dump your own cartridges and copy your own saves — our cartridge-dumping walkthrough shows how — and lean on homebrew and legally-distributed curated sets. The device does not care where the files came from. The copyright office might.

Where to actually buy in 2026

Availability is a real, non-cosmetic difference. Anbernic is a large, established Shenzhen OEM with a deep catalog and reliable stock; the RG35XX family is trivially easy to buy on AliExpress and Amazon. The Miyoo, by contrast, has a long history of supply constraints — comparison after comparison notes the Anbernic is "much easier to buy, whereas Miyoo has supply issues." If you want a device this week rather than after a three-week AliExpress crossing, that alone may make the decision for you. Buy from the official Miyoo store or reputable specialty retailers, and check seller ratings carefully — counterfeit and rebranded units exist for both.

The RG35XX Is a Moving Target

This is the single most confusing thing about the comparison, and the brief walked straight into it. "The RG35XX" is not one product. It is a family that spans two entirely different chip generations, and which one you mean changes the whole argument.

The original (2022): the true Miyoo competitor

The device I have been comparing against the Miyoo throughout — the Actions ATM7039S, quad A9, PowerVR, 256MB, no Wi-Fi, mini-HDMI — is the original 2022 RG35XX. This is the correct head-to-head, because it launched at $59.99 into the same niche the Miyoo occupies: a vertical, stick-less, sub-$70 machine whose honest ceiling is PS1 plus light Nintendo DS. Everything in the spec table above refers to this unit.

The H700 refreshes: a different, better animal

Since 2023, Anbernic has re-released the RG35XX name on a completely different platform: the Allwinner H700, a quad-core Cortex-A53 at 1.5GHz with a Mali-G31 MP2 GPU, 1GB of LPDDR4, a 3300mAh battery good for around 8 hours, and — crucially — Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2. This is the silicon inside the RG35XX Plus, the RG35XX H (horizontal), and the RG35XX SP (clamshell). It is a real generational jump. DROIX's testing is unambiguous: "The H700 processor with GPU runs faster than the Miyoo processor," and it opens up "faster performance on PlayStation 1 and Dreamcast," with PSP now in reach for "low demanding games ... playable with some frame skipping." One correction to bank while we are here: the RG35XX H uses a 3.5-inch 640×480 screen, not the 4-inch panel the brief claims — the 4-inch device is the separate RG40XX H.

Which RG35XX did the brief mean?

The brief's own facts are internally contradictory, which is how you know it conflated models. It cites 256MB RAM (original) but also describes an "H variant" with HDMI and Wi-Fi cloud features (H700). It cannot be both. If you are cross-shopping the Miyoo against an RG35XX in 2026, my strong advice is to buy an H700-based unit — the Plus or the H — not the aging original. For roughly the same money you get double-again the RAM, a real GPU upgrade, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a battery that outlasts even the Miyoo. Against an H700 RG35XX, the Miyoo's only remaining structural advantages are size and OnionOS polish. Against the original RG35XX, the Miyoo's case is much stronger. Know which fight you are actually having.

Five Buyers, Two Handhelds

Specifications are abstract. People are not. Here are five concrete buyers and the device each should walk away with — because the right answer genuinely changes depending on who is asking.

The pocket purist and the couch player

1. The commuter who plays SNES and GBA on the train. Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus. Your entire library is inside its perfect zone, you value the smaller footprint and the extra two hours of battery, and OnionOS makes the daily pick-up-and-play ritual a pleasure. The RG35XX's extra compute would sit idle in your bag.

2. The person who wants to play on the television. Buy an RG35XX — original or H700. The mini-HDMI port is the whole reason. The Miyoo cannot output video at all, so this is not a comparison; it is a disqualification. Pair it with a Bluetooth or USB controller (the H700 models have Bluetooth built in) and you have a $70 couch machine.

The long-session player and the tinkerer

3. The RPG grinder doing 4-hour Final Fantasy sessions. Lean Miyoo Mini Plus for battery, unless your hands cramp on small devices — in which case the larger, more comfortable RG35XX wins on ergonomics despite the shorter runtime. DROIX explicitly praised the Anbernic as "more comfortable to hold over longer gaming sessions." This one is genuinely personal; hold both if you can.

4. The firmware tinkerer who reflashes for fun. Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus and run OnionUI, or buy an H700 RG35XX and run muOS, Knulli, or MinUI. The original RG35XX's GarlicOS is fine but its successor has stalled, whereas the H700 platform has a thriving multi-firmware scene. If experimenting with operating systems is the hobby, the H700 is the richer sandbox.

The PS1 devotee and the gift buyer

5. The buyer who mainly wants clean PlayStation 1 — and the person buying a gift. For PS1, buy an RG35XX; the discrete PowerVR (original) or Mali-G31 (H700) handles Sony's catalog with the composure the Miyoo can't quite match on the heavy titles. For a gift to a non-technical person, buy the Miyoo Mini Plus pre-loaded with OnionOS — it is the one most likely to produce delight out of the box and the least likely to generate a tech-support call. Different buyers, opposite answers, same $60.

Switching Sides: A Migration Guide

Say you already own one and want to move to the other — or you are running both and want your saves to follow you. Good news and bad news. The good news: your battery saves are portable. The bad news: your save states mostly are not.

Understanding what moves and what doesn't

There are two kinds of save data, and they behave completely differently when you jump firmwares. A battery save (a .srm file, the in-game save a cartridge would have stored) is tied to the game and the emulator core, not the device — copy it between two machines running the same RetroArch core and it just works. A save state (a .state file, a full snapshot of emulator memory) is locked to the exact core and often the exact core version that produced it. Move a save state between a Miyoo running one core build and an RG35XX running another and it will, more often than not, refuse to load or crash. Finish your current room, make an in-game save, and migrate the .srm. Treat states as disposable.

Mapping the folders

Both firmwares organize the microSD similarly but not identically. The safest approach is to locate your save directory on the source device, copy the .srm files out, and drop them into the matching system folder on the target. Rough map:

# OnionOS (Miyoo Mini Plus) — microSD root
/
├── miyoo283_fw.img     # firmware image — DO NOT delete
├── BIOS/               # PS1 scph*.bin, gba_bios.bin, etc.
├── Roms/               # one folder per system: SFC, GBA, PS, MD ...
├── Saves/              # .srm battery saves + .state states live here
├── RetroArch/          # cores, configs, per-game overrides
└── Emu/                # per-system launch configuration

# GarlicOS (RG35XX) — second microSD slot, root
/
├── Roms/               # SNES, GBA, PS, MD ... (GarlicOS naming)
├── Saves/              # .srm + .state land here
├── CFW/                # RetroArch, cores, BIOS
└── BIOS/

# RULE OF THUMB
#  .srm  -> copies 1:1 between same RetroArch core.  Portable.
#  .state-> core + version locked.  Do NOT rely on these moving.
#  Folder names vary by firmware build — confirm before bulk-copying.

The practical checklist

Step by step: (1) On the source device, make an in-game save in every title you care about, so the progress lives in a portable .srm. (2) Power down, pull the microSD, and mount it on a PC. (3) Copy the Saves folder somewhere safe — this is your backup. (4) On the target device's card, find the matching per-system save directory and drop the .srm files in, matching filenames to ROM names exactly (the save must share the ROM's base filename). (5) Leave the .state files behind; do not fight them. (6) Boot, load a game, and confirm your in-game save loads before you wipe anything. If you are moving between an OnionOS Miyoo and an H700 RG35XX running Knulli, the same rules apply — RetroArch is RetroArch, and its .srm format is stable across builds.

Pros, Cons, and the Final Call

Everything above, compressed into the two ledgers you actually make the decision from, and then a ruling.

Miyoo Mini Plus: the ledger

RG35XX: the ledger

The Machine's ruling

Strip the marketing and the myth and it comes to this. The RG35XX has more silicon and converts it into exactly two visible advantages — cleaner PlayStation 1 and, on the original, a whiff of Nintendo DS — plus the structural wins of HDMI-out, dual SD slots, and easy availability. The Miyoo Mini Plus has worse silicon and beats the RG35XX anyway on the things you touch every day: the best firmware in the class, the longest battery, Wi-Fi, and a body that vanishes into a pocket. That the 128MB dual-core device holds its own against the 256MB quad-core device is the entire lesson of the budget tier — firmware and form factor outrank raw specification when your ceiling is PlayStation 1.

So: if your library lives at or below the 16-bit and GBA line and you want the most refined handheld experience under $70, buy the Miyoo Mini Plus and flash OnionOS. If you want television output, horizontal comfort, or a genuine step up in emulation, do not buy the original RG35XX out of nostalgia for this comparison — buy an H700-based RG35XX H or Plus, which for the same money delivers 1GB of RAM, a Mali-G31, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and eight hours of battery, and which DROIX confirms simply "runs faster than the Miyoo processor." Two good handhelds, one honest split. Just don't let anyone tell you they share a chip — they never did.